System: Wii
Score: 7.5

Soulcalibur Legends is a new and very different Soulcalibur game. Instead of fighting another character in a one on one match, like the other Soulcalibur games have you do, you run through levels fighting enemies and solving simple puzzles.

You play as Siegfried, a young man who is trying to collect the fragments of Soulcalibur and resurrect it in order to obtain great power. You are accompanied by several other classic Soulcalibur characters, each whom have their own thoughts on Soulcalibur; some want to take it from Siegfried, while others want to destroy it. These characters all unite for one reason though, and that is to collect the four fragments of Soulcalibur so that the Holy Roman Empire can defeat the Ottoman Empire. Monsters known as ‘Evils’ are roaming the world and aiding the Ottoman Empire in its battle against the Holy Roman Empire, so the Romans’ only hope for survival is the resurrection of Soulcalibur, which is powerful enough to defeat the ‘evils’.

What this amounts to is some dialog between pictures as the characters explain why you’re traveling to the next area. Once you enter an area you run through rooms or segments of the level only to be stopped by an invisible force field which can only be lifted when  you either flip a switch or defeat all of the enemies in that room. That’s really just about all there is to this game. The enemies tend to look very similar and are all fairly simple, while the levels themselves all have the same basic layout and also tend to look fairly similar. The lack of innovative details or ideas within this game makes it get pretty boring pretty fast, and if you’re expecting difficult fights you’re probably going to be pretty disappointed. The only thing that you really have to work towards is speeding through levels in order to improve your ‘class’ title, which is actually pretty meaningless.

If you’re able to accept that this game is an unoriginal hack-and-slash game which doesn’t have much in common with other Soulcalibur games besides the characters, than its really not horrible. Other than being repetitive, the game itself plays fine, it’s just pretty boring. If you enjoy hack-and-slash games and like the Soulcalibur characters, you’ll probably enjoy this game, but if you’re looking for something innovative, look elsewhere.